DIY Ammonia dosing for low nitrate systems

[A_Blind_Reefer]

To be literal. Bacteria don't actually breath. Correct? They chemically require oxygen which can be obtained from DO or bound oxygen. I make this distinction because it's hard enough conversing anaerobic vs anoxic depending on the background. Seems waste water treatment thinks differently than biology professionals yet I'm pretty sure neither think of it as breathing.

I could be wrong. My head is still spinning from getting a grasp on phosphorous where active workers don't need it although I believe they have a half life much shorter than real workers therefore new recruits constantly being needed which will need P and other things. More spinning.

These discussions are actually fascinating but often elicit four Advils after digesting the content. You guys are on a much higher level than self so excuse the lag as I'm constantly having to unlearn that just learned. Doubt I'll ever fully grasp why carbon doising works beyond it does and I think I'm content with that but ammonium feeding is something I'd like to get a good grasp on since it's something I plan on employing since first discovering it actually was a thing. Although I've known for a while plants prefer it vs nitrates which they need to down convert but wasn't sure how those dynamics work with corals. Seems that more I think of them as plants the easier this is getting.

Oh I’m waaaaay beyond four Advils!

 

[jda]

Breathing was a metaphor for just doing their basic job.

 

[jda]

My head is still spinning from getting a grasp on phosphorous where active workers don't need it although I believe they have a half life much shorter than real workers therefore new recruits constantly being needed which will need P and other things.

Hosts recycle building blocks for their symbionts. The process is not completely efficient, so you need some new ones to maintain. You need many more new building blocks to grow.

This is why a bleaching event for a coral can be so devastating - the literally spent a lifetime accumulating what they had to expel.

 

[Makara23]

So ammonia to nitrite is basically like breathing for the bacteria? They aren’t using it to reproduce?

Yes, to put it simply.

How can this be true when cycling a sterile tank by dosing initial bacteria and ammonium chloride, the population still grows enough to eventually cover all surface area? Wondering how they can still reproduce with no phosphate, unless the bacteria dosing solution also contains some kind of phosphorus.

 

[jda]

Some bottled bacteria has building blocks in the bottle. Even if they don't, all that they have to do is just process ammonia. It is not usually until fish, food sources, etc are added until the tank becomes an ecosystem with things covering every surface - plenty of that stuff once you start feeding fish.

Bacteria need no phosphate - they need phosphorous. I know that people use the terms interchangeably, but they are different in context like this.

If you have any rock or sand, there will have been some phosphates bound to the rock that get unbound in fresh, clean saltwater since the water level is very low. Also, the type of phosphate that we can test for (orthophosphate) is only one of the many forms of phosphorous in the tank.

 

[taricha]

How can this be true when cycling a sterile tank by dosing initial bacteria and ammonium chloride, the population still grows enough to eventually cover all surface area? Wondering how they can still reproduce with no phosphate,

Classic nitrifiers are incredibly efficient. 1) It takes very very few of them to process aquarium amounts of ammonia. Analysis by aquabiomics, or academic labs find low single digit percent nitrifiers in the bacterial composition of live rock films.
So they need to grow very little, and
2) they can grow with pretty low PO4.
3) aragonite surfaces often have some PO4 available.

And, just your occasional reminder. When we dose ammonia into a mature reef system, the photosynthetic organism surfaces vastly outweighs the nitrifier bacterial mass. It is very unlikely that dosing ammonia in the context of this thread is going to be significantly processed by classic nitrifiers.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I cannot tell if any further discussion is needed. If anyone is unclear on what phosphate is or is not used for, in relation to the nitrogen cycle, I’m happy to expand on the various discussions above.

 

[GARRIGA]

To be clear. Nitrifiers don’t need phosphorus but if ammonium is dosed to resolve why we believe corals need nitrates then wouldn't we need P?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

To be clear. Nitrifiers don’t need phosphorus but if ammonium is dosed to resolve why we believe corals need nitrates then would t we need P?

All organisms need P to expand in numbers or grow larger. The mere process of using ammonia to make nitrate and get energy from it does not. So a stable biofilm of bacteria at steady state just has a low P demand to replace dead bacteria or make certain biomolecules that are lost.

 

[jda]

All organisms need P to expand in numbers or grow larger. The mere process of using ammonia to make nitrate and get energy from it does not. So a stable biofilm of bacteria at steady state just has a low P demand to replace dead bacteria or make certain biomolecules that are lost.

Have you ever written about the differences in building blocks vs energy vs whatever as it pertains to reefing? If you have, my apologies. This might need a visit since people too often think that adding building blocks is giving energy/feed for their corals to function better when they already have a surplus of building blocks. This amazes me since many of them are interested in "just enough" light to keep things alive.

 

[Miami Reef]

Have you ever written about the differences in building blocks vs energy vs whatever as it pertains to reefing? If you have, my apologies. This might need a visit since people too often think that adding building blocks is giving energy for their corals to function better when they already have a surplus of building blocks. This amazes me since many of them are interested in "just enough" light to keep things alive.

If people invested their time and energy in supplying adequate light instead of worrying about the powders, aminos, and other nutrient concoctions.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Have you ever written about the differences in building blocks vs energy vs whatever as it pertains to reefing? If you have, my apologies. This might need a visit since people too often think that adding building blocks is giving energy/feed for their corals to function better when they already have a surplus of building blocks. This amazes me since many of them are interested in "just enough" light to keep things alive.

No, I haven't.

 

[GARRIGA]

All organisms need P to expand in numbers or grow larger. The mere process of using ammonia to make nitrate and get energy from it does not. So a stable biofilm of bacteria at steady state just has a low P demand to replace dead bacteria or make certain biomolecules that are lost.

Was referencing the idea that coral utilize ammonium directly as do plants vs having bacteria convert ammonium to nitrates. This is what I believe is occurring because plants need to down-convert nitrates to nitrites then ammonium. Would seem logical that coral behave in the same way since much of what they do seems to mimic plants. Why I believe heavy feeding benefits corals directly and would allow running nitrates at or near zero since they obtain their energy downstream of nitrates. Likely what occurs on the reef where nitrates are below our hobby level tests.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Was referencing the idea that coral utilize ammonium directly as do plants vs having bacteria convert ammonium to nitrates. This is what I believe is occurring because plants need to down-convert nitrates to nitrites then ammonium. Would seem logical that coral behave in the same way since much of what they do seems to mimic plants. Why I believe heavy feeding benefits corals directly and would allow running nitrates at or near zero since they obtain their energy downstream of nitrates. Likely what occurs on the reef where nitrates are below our hobby level tests.

It is certainly correct that any organism using nitrate will have to remove the oxygen atoms from it chemically before doing most anything else with it.

 

[SaltCreepReef]

I have been following this thread for a while and have been struggling with low nitrates and phosphates for about a year. I upped my feeding as much as I can without polluting the water and it had brought my phosphate into a stable range I like (.08-.1) but my nitrates are still less than 1ppm. I have two autofeeders feeding pellets and reef roids 4x a day each and feed the equivalent of about 6-7 cubes of my own frozen mix daily plus a sheet of nori and 20ml of Acropower. I have no mechanical filtration, I have completely removed my refugium, and I run a protein skimmer that is running very dry skim mate. I don't regularly test my nitrate, but I was starting to lose all the true reds in my acros and read that low nitrates could be a cause, I sent out an ICP-MS test to Oceamo Labs and it matched my Phosphate measurements via Hanna Checker and confirmed my low Nitrates at 0.4ppm. I started dosing Ammonia Bicarb per your recipe @Randy Holmes-Farley about a month ago. I started slow with 96ml/day dosing 5ml every 30min and have ramped up 1ml per dose every 6-7 days so I can keep an eye on my Phosphate. I will say after the first week my phosphate had dropped to 0.06 and has stabilized around there so far. I am seeing an improvement in colors and PE of all my corals. Shrooms and Zoas are looking significantly better. So far this has been a solid improvement for my system. I am currently dosing 8ml every 30min. Will be sending out another ICP this weekend to see any changes from the last month

System details:
Total volume: ~800g
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 8-8.5
Calc: 450
Mag: 1400
Temp: 77-78
Phosphate: 0.06
Nitrate: 0.4

Happy to provide any other details or additional information that might be of interest on the topic.

 

[Propane]

I have been following this thread for a while and have been struggling with low nitrates and phosphates for about a year. I upped my feeding as much as I can without polluting the water and it had brought my phosphate into a stable range I like (.08-.1) but my nitrates are still less than 1ppm. I have two autofeeders feeding pellets and reef roids 4x a day each and feed the equivalent of about 6-7 cubes of my own frozen mix daily plus a sheet of nori and 20ml of Acropower. I have no mechanical filtration, I have completely removed my refugium, and I run a protein skimmer that is running very dry skim mate. I don't regularly test my nitrate, but I was starting to lose all the true reds in my acros and read that low nitrates could be a cause, I sent out an ICP-MS test to Oceamo Labs and it matched my Phosphate measurements via Hanna Checker and confirmed my low Nitrates at 0.4ppm. I started dosing Ammonia Bicarb per your recipe @Randy Holmes-Farley about a month ago. I started slow with 96ml/day dosing 5ml every 30min and have ramped up 1ml per dose every 6-7 days so I can keep an eye on my Phosphate. I will say after the first week my phosphate had dropped to 0.06 and has stabilized around there so far. I am seeing an improvement in colors and PE of all my corals. Shrooms and Zoas are looking significantly better. So far this has been a solid improvement for my system. I am currently dosing 8ml every 30min. Will be sending out another ICP this weekend to see any changes from the last month

System details:
Total volume: ~800g
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 8-8.5
Calc: 450
Mag: 1400
Temp: 77-78
Phosphate: 0.06
Nitrate: 0.4

Happy to provide any other details or additional information that might be of interest on the topic.

Are you dosing with fish in the tank? I was wondering if you could to simulate a larger bio load without hurting the fish.

 

[brandon429]

I would give anything to have a co-study running alongside this thread: with anyone dosing the ammonia to a tank, please take an api ammonia reading if you have the kit before, during, and after and post the resolution times the kit shows. interested to know if it's minutes, hours or days to bring levels back down AND I'm interested to know if the kit picks up the known inputted dose and registers it accurately (vs showing no change in stasis on the test kit from the pre-dose tank measurement)

it only takes about 10 mins on average for a common reef tank to resolve pretty large ammonia doses (as tracked on calibrated digital seneye machines) so the time intervals for the readouts from API will be a factor and would be very interesting to see for sure as a large pattern set. we could learn alot about the contextual accuracy of that staple aquarium test kit right from this thread. no hijack intended, salivating at the cycle science inputs that could be had here since hundreds of people are going to be dosing raw ammonia into their reefs. doesnt have to be API, post what u got for an ammonia test kit.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I have been following this thread for a while and have been struggling with low nitrates and phosphates for about a year. I upped my feeding as much as I can without polluting the water and it had brought my phosphate into a stable range I like (.08-.1) but my nitrates are still less than 1ppm. I have two autofeeders feeding pellets and reef roids 4x a day each and feed the equivalent of about 6-7 cubes of my own frozen mix daily plus a sheet of nori and 20ml of Acropower. I have no mechanical filtration, I have completely removed my refugium, and I run a protein skimmer that is running very dry skim mate. I don't regularly test my nitrate, but I was starting to lose all the true reds in my acros and read that low nitrates could be a cause, I sent out an ICP-MS test to Oceamo Labs and it matched my Phosphate measurements via Hanna Checker and confirmed my low Nitrates at 0.4ppm. I started dosing Ammonia Bicarb per your recipe @Randy Holmes-Farley about a month ago. I started slow with 96ml/day dosing 5ml every 30min and have ramped up 1ml per dose every 6-7 days so I can keep an eye on my Phosphate. I will say after the first week my phosphate had dropped to 0.06 and has stabilized around there so far. I am seeing an improvement in colors and PE of all my corals. Shrooms and Zoas are looking significantly better. So far this has been a solid improvement for my system. I am currently dosing 8ml every 30min. Will be sending out another ICP this weekend to see any changes from the last month

System details:
Total volume: ~800g
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 8-8.5
Calc: 450
Mag: 1400
Temp: 77-78
Phosphate: 0.06
Nitrate: 0.4

Happy to provide any other details or additional information that might be of interest on the topic.

That’s great to hear. Thanks for the info!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Are you dosing with fish in the tank? I was wondering if you could to simulate a larger bio load without hurting the fish.

That is the intent and you certainly can, just do go overboard with a single dose.

 

[SaltCreepReef]

Are you dosing with fish in the tank? I was wondering if you could to simulate a larger bio load without hurting the fish.

Yes. I have about 80 fish and probably in the range of 400 corals in my system, dosing directly into the overflow of one of my tanks via a dosing pump. Seen nothing but improvement since I started.